Ubisoft’s misguided and universally despised Digital Rights Management system proved itself a complete failure last week, depriving rightful owners of Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 the ability to play the very games they paid for. It would appear Ubisoft’s servers failed, an event everyone knew would happen sooner or later as a perfect illustrative example of DRM nonsense that harms no one but the paying customer.
Ubisoft, is all this bad press really worth these daily articles? Can you truly say you’ve sold more copes of Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 because of your new DRM scheme? Or have you pushed away even more customers and alienated loyal fans? It’s not too late to call the whole thing off and return to creating stable, relatively bug-free games that merit a purchase.
Last weekend, two statements were issued from the UK Community Manager:
Ubi.Vigil (UK Community Manager): I don’t have any clear information on what the issue is since I’m not in the office, but clearly the extended downtime and lengthy login issues are unacceptable, particularly as I’ve been told these servers are constantly monitored.
I’ll do what I can to get more information on what the issue is here first thing tomorrow and push for a resolution and assurance this won’t happen in the future. I realise that’s not ideal but there’s only so much I can do on a weekend as I’m not directly involved with the server side of this system.
Ubi.Vigil (UK Community Manager): Due to exceptional demand, we are currently experiencing difficulties with the Online Service Platform. This does not affect customers who are currently playing, but customers attempting to start a game may experience difficulty in accessing our servers. We are currently working to resolve this issue and apologize for any inconvenience.
This year’s GDC (Game Developer’s Conference) is fully underway, and Sony has finally announced an official name for their upcoming PS3 Motion Controller, previously rumored to be codenamed “Arc.”
The official name is now “PlayStation Move,” and Sony managed to show off some software during its presentation such as a sports pack tentatively titled “Sports Champions,” which included table tennis and archery among other activities. Another game pack, entitled “Move Party,” was shown off and evidently superimposes images such as swords and shields into the game based upon the movement of the PS Move controller. The software sounds very similar to some Virtual Reality technology I experienced back during E3 2009, which superimposed a sword and shield onto my hands with VR goggles.
Sony showed off two different motion controllers during the GDC presentation: the previously disclosed Move with the orb at the end, and an orb-less “sub-controller” which evidently can act like the Wii’s Nunchuck accessory. Some demonstrations included players using two orb-topped Moves – one in each hand.
The release date is still scheduled for sometime in the fall, but a price point was announced: $100 for a starter kit that includes a Move controller, the PlayStation Eye and a game. There will also be three separate bundles: the controller itself, a controller and a PlayStation Eye, and a PS3 system bundle.
Several games have been announced for Move support including Socom 4.
More details were not announced, and Sony did not unveil a specific release date.
Despite the ridiculously over-covered scandal involving Tiger Woods’ personal life, EA Sports has stayed true to its words by continuing its relationship with the golfer, announcing that Tiger’s latest golfing title, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, will release June 8 on the Wii, PS3, Xbox 360 and and iPhone.
The game will feature “one of the most prestigious tournaments in golf,” The Ryder Cup, which is said to be one of the last great sporting events to be founded in prestige rather than prize money. The Ryder Cup is a competition hosted by Ryder Cup Europe LLP and the PGA of America that brings together the best American and European golfers in a team competition format. Accordingly, Tiger Woods will represent the U.S. team and Rory McIlroy will represent Europeans. McIlroy is a pro golfer hailing from Northern Ireland and currently ranked 9th according to the Official World Golf Rankings.
Players will be able to choose from the U.S. or European squad and participate in the various competition formats – foursomes where players hit alternate shots, fourballs, and singles, which traditionally bring the biennial event to a close with players going head to head. When playing The Ryder Cup mode offline, you will have the option to swap matches. Team play will not only be available offline, but online with the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.
The Wii version will support Motion Plus much like last year’s PGA Tour title, and will feature an Advanced Plus swing difficulty that reads rotation and swing angle while the Tour Pro swing mechanic assesses rotation, swing plane and point of contact.
The game is also going to support Sony’s upcoming Motion Controller for the PS3, but as the title is scheduled to launch on June 8 and the Motion Controller isn’t scheduled to launch until this fall, we’re not sure if the game will already have Motion Controller support built in or if it will arrive in another retail version or DLC.
It looks like Scribblenauts’ sales have been a resounding success because Warner Bros. just announced that it plans to release a sequel to the dictionary-based DS title from last year.
The game, tentatively titled Scribblenauts 2, will release in fall 2010 and will include an adjectives system that “allows players to push the limits of their imagination to create their own experience.”
From the press release:
“In this new game created and developed by 5TH Cell, players use the stylus and touch screen to help Maxwell, the game’s hero, acquire the ‘Starite,’ the prize earned from solving the puzzle in even more robust challenges and redesigned levels. Players now have the ability to write any object that comes to mind and modify it in any way they desire using adjectives to reach the goal in each level. Adjectives can change the colour, size, elements, behaviours and many other aspects of the object they are describing. Multiple adjectives can be combined together to produce incredibly creative objects, allowing the player’s imagination to run wild for a truly unique and individualistic experience.”
A sequel to such a creative title sounds wonderful, but let’s hope 5th Cell submarines the bug from the first game which allowed you to beat the title with just two words.
We’ve been wondering for a while now when Nintendo would update the current Wii bundle in North America to replace the same launch version from 2006 which includes just the system, controller and Wii Sports.
If some posts over on VGChartz are to believed, then Nintendo may have secretly rolled out a new (still white) Wii bundle that includes Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort, as well as Motion Plus. Note that Europe has already received the bundle shown above, in black no less.
A poster on VGChartz’s forums is claiming to have run into the Wii bundle pictured above at a Wal-Mart in Illinois.
It has already been confirmed by both Nintendo and outside sources that the Wii is currently suffering from shortages due to the insane sales numbers from December, so a new SKU would make sense at this point.
Unfortunately, we can only file this report under rumor status for now as Nintendo has released no information on any new bundles, which is odd considering that the company just wrapped up its 2010 Media Summit presentation. With GDC coming up this month though, Nintendo could still drop some news on a new bundle.
If you own an original, fat model PS3, then Sony is suggesting you stop using it for a period of 24 hours while the company institutes a fix for a problem plaguing PS3s worldwide.
If you haven’t experienced the problem yourself, here is what is reported to occur: When you try to go online or boot up certain games, the system displays “Error: 8001050F,” and it endlessly reboots, rendering the games/online functionality unplayable. Complaints about the error have apparently begun pouring in since Sunday, and Sony has indicated that the flaw is related to clock functionality in the fat-model PS3. Sony does not believe that the error is affecting PS3 Slim models.
So in the mean time, Sony is suggesting that you stay off your PS3 until a fix is instituted. From Sony:
“As you may be aware, some customers have been unable to connect to the PlayStation Network today. This problem affects the models other than the new slim PS3.
We believe we have identified that this problem is being caused by a bug in the clock functionality incorporated in the system.
Errors include:
* The date of the PS3 system may be re-set to Jan 1, 2000.
* When the user tries to sign-in to the PlayStation Network, the following message appears on the screen; “An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)”.
* When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; “Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game.”
* When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the Internet, the following message appears on the screen; “The current date and time could not be obtained. (8001050F)”
* Users are not able to playback certain rental video downloaded from the PlayStation Store before the expiration date.
We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.
As mentioned above, Please be advised that the new slim PS3 is not affected with this error. We are doing our best to resolve the issue and do apologize for any inconvenience caused.
For the latest status on this situation please check either the PlayStation blog (blog.us.playstation.com) or PlayStation.com.”
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